"A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government; a government is only the creature of the constitution."
-Thomas Paine

In 1778, Massachusetts was looking to adopt a new constitution to replace the old royal charter that, understandably, didn't seem appropriate for the newly formed republican commonwealth. The General Court (the legislature) drafted a constitution, which it then sent out to the towns of Massachusetts to be debated, voted and approved. The constitution was debated, it was voted on and it was defeated overwhelmingly. There were plenty of objections to the text of the document itself-it didn't have a Bill of Rights, for instance-but the biggest criticism was procedural: the constitution was not, and could not, be legitimate because it had been written solely by members of the legislature.

That, they understood, is simply not how a constitution is created. A body separate from (and superior to) the legislature, elected by the people for the specific purpose of drafting a constitution, was the only legitimate author of a constitution. Two years later, a second constitution, drafted by a specially elected constitutional convention, was voted on and passed and remains the commonwealth's constitution today.

We find ourselves in a similar situation now. The SGO has decided that it needs a new constitution. We agree. We cannot agree, however, with the means they have chosen to go about creating it. The project of writing a new constitution cannot be delegated to an ad hoc committee of the Student Senate. A special committee, elected by the student body, its membership not limited to SGO officials, must be established and the task of creating the new constitution must fall to them. This process is the only way that a legitimate constitution can be drafted.

Whatever its final form, a constitution written by the committee that currently exists will be tainted and illegitimate. In order to establish the legitimacy of a new constitution, the student body must reject any document brought to a vote by this committee.